Christmas cards 2009

Janae and Janell volunteer

Janell and I have been volunteering at Thanksgiving Point. I get regular emails asking for help and we volunteer for the fun things. Halloween was Barnyard Boo, a carnival for preschoolers or kids that don't like to be scared and this week we were Santa's helpers. I took pictures of Santa and families and Janell mounted them and delivered them.

Snow in Omaha by Kay

Thursday was the third day in a row school was canceled in Omaha. Tuesday it snowed, Wednesday it snowed some more, the wind blew and the temperature dropped below zero. Thursday was just cold and the city is still digging out. I spent the first two days plowing snow. As soon as I got it all plowed I would have to start over at the beginning. I plowed my lots 3 times on Tuesday then spent all day Wednesday moving it out of the way and plowing walks, roads and parking stalls. Of course that was between driving tenants to work, pushing and pulling stuck cars and teaching my Burma tenants about driving in the snow. Many of them have nice cars but have never driven in snow before. Like most inexperienced snow drivers they don't realize spinning your tires as fast as they can does no good. One tenant was stuck in the middle of the parking lot in his nice Dodge Durango 4x4. When I saw him spinning his tires until the rubber smoked I stopped him and motioned for him to let me help. He didn't speak English. I hopped in, shifted it into four wheel drive and slowly straightened it out. I spent about a half an hour getting the car in the picture started this morning so she could get to school. She had not started it since before the snow started falling. Believe it or not she did not leave the hood up overnight. The wind blew all that snow up onto her engine while it was parked with the hood closed. This afternoon I went into an apartment to finish some work and noted it was very cold. I switched the furnace on and started my work. Out of curiosity I went and got a digital thermometer and placed it on the counter while I worked. The furnace had been running a while so I am not sure how cold it actually was but the thermometer dropped to 46 before it started rising.

Victoria Secret and the spoon

I don't usually shop at Victoria Secret but got an email about their cyber Monday sweater sale. 3 sweaters for $30.00 and a free scarf with 20% off that is 33.00 for the 4 items. I was cooking soup and was so distracted I didn't notice my spoon had fallen and was resting on the coil burner and was on fire. I noticed a small flame coming out from under my pan on my electric stove, the spoon handle had caught fire and wa-la it melted. So this is what Victoria Secret did to my cutco spoon (it's next to a normal cutco spoon). Luckily I will send it in to be repaired.

Thanksgiving at the Day's and California trip

Thanksgiving Day in Valencia California with the Day family

Pics: Kay and my sister Debbilyn
Day. Jeremy and Dave make the stuffing and Ryan is the happy overworked dishwasher.

We got "Southern California passes" from Costco, drove to California, and had an exhausting but fun trip. 2 days at Disneyland, 1 day at Seaworld, San Diego Zoo and Universal Studios. Kay was the lone man and drove the whole time -3 hours! Leah, Kay's little sister and her 3 girls plus Kay Janell and I made up our party of 7.











Amber, Erica,Jana, and Leah Lusk

Janell and the totaled Toyota

Firsts for Janell:
accident,
driving to the library by herself,
airbag popping out,
blacking out for a second,
having to give her license to the police officer,
tell her parents she wrecked the car,
talking to paramedics
telling paramedics she was OK,
talk to a police officer
ride in a police car

Farewell to my Toyota Camry. Janell was driving from the school to the library on a two lane road. The cars were going slow and the car in the right lane stopped (a no no) to let a truck exit a business parking lot, Janell kept going and ran into the truck. Her airbag went off (32 mph) and she totaled my car. I was in Omaha arriving home that evening. She called Kay and said the thought it was her fault. It turns out it wasn't her fault! It was the 70 year old guys that exited in front of her. She had to do it all by herself... talk to the police officer, make a statement, remember what happened. The police officer spoke to Kay on the phone and drove her home. My good friend Gayle came over to check on her and tell her she was normal. Our neighbor Brad came over and gave her a priesthood blessing. I was just saying to Kay that my car is getting kind of old..... maybe it is time for a new one....... Ya think?



Seat belt injury. Head ache, bumps and bruises. She will see a Dr. on Thursday

Pre Halloween fun

Janell and I volunteered for Thanksgiving Point's Barnyard Boo. A Halloween Carnival for preschoolers and kids that don't like to get scared. She was the volunteer over the cookie decorating booth and I was in the booth attached, that decorated picture frames. We used Disney parade hats to make our costumes. The kids liked us. A couple times we bumped right into each other's mouths as we weren't used to how long our new heads were.



They had an amazing face painter. Not typical...

New Orleans final day

We are home now from New Orleans, where there were lots of things to do…. For our final day we took a walking tour of the French Quarter with the park Service. It was boring but some of us learned some things. Others just increased their skills at Yahtzee. The tour stopped right in front of Café Du Monde where they are famous for their Bingets. The only things on the menu besides the bingnets are drinks (picture). You sit at a busy table, they come and take your order for bingnets and a drink, you pay and that is that. We also picked up a Muffeletto sandwich at Central Grocery, famous in New Orleans. In the afternoon we took a 3.5 hour self guided CD driving tour of Katrina. It was very sobering. Much has been done in the clean up efforts but there are lots of reminders. One sobering thing are the X’s on houses, Each X represents a time the house was visited by the army or whomever. One house had 4 X’s on it. Between the top V they have the date visited, the other V’s of the X have important information. On this house the 3rd visit found 3 dead. People went into their attics and died there and they didn’t start going into the attics to look for dead bodies until a few weeks after the damage. Some that went into the attics took hatchets with them so they could hack their way out. Some just died. It was August and extremely hot. One leavy was never finished because they were arguing who would pay for it and everyone suffered. After getting back to our condo we voted to not go out for dinner….. NO, NO, NO, not another delicious, high fat meal!!!! We ate the few leftovers we had and packed up. Janell and I came home on a 10AM flight, went to the cabin and waited for Kay’s 5PM flight to come in. One thing I regret is not taking a class at the New Orleans cooking school. Maybe another time. Best thing we did: Buy an entertainment coupon book for New Orleans. That is how we chose where we were eating. We ordered 2 meals (buy one get one free) and shared them. Plenty for us. Janell’s favorite thing: road trip, WWII museum Janae: swamp tour, WWII museum. Kay: Biloxi shrimp boat

New Orleans #4 #5 Mis-a-sip, al-bam, National WWII museum

Tuesday was our road trip day. We needed to visit some states we had never been to (we needed to check them off) so we had a road trip. I studied what would be fun to do on the Gulf coast in Mississippi and Alabama and was pretty stumped. I found a shrimp boat ride in Biloxi Mississippi, that is what we did. This was a science boat for tourists. They put out a shrimp net and a chain to dredge up the bottom of the water for 20 minutes and took up their catch, talked about the sea life they found and released the catch....sort of, the seagulls picked it up as fast as they tossed it back.

They were pretty excited to catch a 35 lb red fish in their net. They had never done that before, when the boss takes pictures, you know it has to be good. We liked the tour and learned things about the fish they caught.... shrimp, crabs, jellyfish and about 15 other fish. They mentioned that shrimp are the cheapest they have ever seen. We stopped and talked to some fishermen and bought some shrimp on the way home from our road trip.

quote from Forrest Gump: Bubba: Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it.

Back to the road trip, When we got to Alabama we saw some cotton growing along the side the road and had to get out and investigate. In Mobile we found a 1 hour Mobile City tour, took it and felt like we had seen Mobile.

On our way home we picked up the 72 lbs of shrimp, and spent two hours cutting heads and tail spears off the shrimp (13 count per pound=900 shrimp...I think we will start at the top of Bubba Gump's list and work our way to the bottom). One thing about fresh shrimp, it hardly smells.

Today we spent the whole day 9-4:30 at the National WWII Museum. This is an excellent museum with great displays, eyewitness accounts, tour guides and films. Their expansion opens next month and they assured us that would take a full day too. We highly recommend the National WWII Museum. Why is it in New Orleans? Mr. Higgins, the guy that designed 80% of the WWII boats is from New Orleans and they were built there. More wicked afternoon Thunderstorms...

alligators and plantations New Orleans #3

Day 3 of our New Orleans trip sent us on an air boat ride in the bayou. We were in a smaller boat with 5 of us total on the boat and saw tons of alligators. Our guide said in a few weeks they would go into hibernation but for now he brought "swamp crack" for them to eat, we would know it as marshmallows. He didn't offer too many but played with one by putting it on his head and waited for another alligator to try to get it off his head. Funny. I felt like I was in the children's book "Liza Lou and the Yeller belly swamp" by Mercer Mayer.... I imagined Liza Lou right there. It is my favorite book to read aloud to children as it is written in a Louisiana accent. This by far topped our Florida air boat tour. It took us a little while to get used to our guide's accent but then we figured out he was driver to many movie stars when they filmed movies there and he collects alligator eggs to protect from predators (one of the dirty jobs from that dirty jobs TV show). Alligator trivia. Alligators lay 23-25 eggs and protect them like crazy until they are born and then eat most of them (carnivores.. hey, fresh meat!). The egg collectors take them and protect them, changing the temperature makes most of them females. If you take an egg out you must not turn it or the alligator will die.

We also went to two plantation houses... Laura and Oak Alley. Kay opted out of the latter and slept in the car while Janell and I toured. He was a good sport. We got into a huge Louisiana storm where lots of people stopped by the side of the road because they couldn't see. Not Kay, he plowed through. We saw a man hole that looked like it was a geyser, cars turned backwards and huge puddles. I can see how this place gets flooded. The weather turns in a few minutes. We enjoyed driving right into a storm. Really cool to watch. You need to be ready for anything.

Sunday in New Orleans #2

We went to church in the New Orleans branch and met Branch President Terry Seamons, Russell Seamons Cousin. They had fast and testimony meeting. It was a great meeting. One testimony was from a man that used to be a Black Panther and found the church. Very cool. Janell and his two Young Women aged daughters were the only Young women.

We talked to the missionaries about someones interest that worked in the french quarter. They are not allowed in the french quarter, they can send a member in.... A little while later we found out why.......

We went back to the condo and walked into the french quarter for dinner, the coupon was for a steak house on Bourbon street so we headed right to Bourbon and walked down that street. Lots of people, lots of music, lots of loud laughter and silliness. There were several girls in bikini's and high heels standing in the doorways. This was strange to me and Kay said "oh there's the prostitutes" oh my gosh Janell and I had our sheltered eyes open and we swore we would never walk down THAT street again. The other streets aren't nearly as bad.

Kay forgot his phone charger so we called the front desk who, being a new hotel, didn't have one that had been left. We walked to the hotel across the street and asked at their front desk and they had one that fit it, but someone had to untangle it. We took it, thanked them and went up their elevator.....and down and left the hotel. If you forget your charger.... ask at a car rental place or a hotel. We have left several at hotels so you give some and you take some.

New Orleans 1

Janell, Kay and I are in New Orleans Louisiana for fall break. Janell will miss 3 days of school. Janell and I arrived 24 hours before Kay as there was a 300 dollar difference in airfare prices. We used the day to go SHOPPING at the french market. there was a flea market with lots of hand made stuff from locals and other flea market stuff, we got some jewelery and Janell got a giraffe purse with some other odds and ends.

Our hotel/condo is on the edge of the French quarter. We signed up for a swamp tour on Monday, My entertainment coupon book arrived in the afternoon we used 3 coupons, 1 riverboat ride, 1 aquarium admission and dinner. I called Rachael from the aquarium to tell her that this aquarium wasn't lame but Omaha zoo aquarium is much better.

We arrived at 11pm so we paid for valet parking which is at the condo at 26 dollars a day with an exit time at 4PM, I begged them to let me keep it there till 6 PM so we could not have too much time to go to dinner and shop at the grocery store before picking up Kay at 9PM.

For lunch we ordered a muffeletta, a big round piece of bread with lots of meats and melted cheese with a olive spread. I just ordered it and Janell looked at it on her plate. Oops, I forgot she doesn't like sandwiches. We ordered 1/2 muffeletta that serves 2 and one cup of gumbo. She kept looking at it until I coaxed her to try it, and this would be the only thing she would eat until a late dinner and she needed to keep her energy up. She actually ate it and said it was "not bad". She ate the whole thing.

We had a nice Mormon conversation with a Park Service Ranger that kept us there with questions mostly about polygamy. He has a Book of Mormon, I tried to get missionaries to him but ended up telling him to get on Mormon.org. He shook our hands as we left and had nice things to say about us and thanked us for enlighening him. We talked a lot about the word of wisdom, families for ever and a modern prophet.

speaking of the word of wisdom, We drove next to a swerving car on our way into town, Janell saw a lady my age swerving walking and said she thought she was drunk and then we knew she was drunk when she walked into a street lamp. Her first drunk experience. This is a party town but there is lots to do without drinking. she also said she has never read so many nasty things on tee shirts for sale and being worn.

Cinnamon rolls and generation picutres

Frances came down for LDS General Conference. She helped Janell make cinnamon rolls.

Before my mom leaves for NYC Temple mission, we thought we'd take some generation pictures

Janell and Mary Alice Clark

4 generations: Janae, Frances Inman, Mary Alice Clark

Claire and Alice Inman (12 months 5 days)

3 generations: Mary Alice, Janae and Janell

A day at Hogle Zoo

Frances and I took Claire and Alice to the zoo.

Frances, Alice, Janae, Claire

The baby elephant was adorable.